B.C. youth continue to strike for climate justice

Greater Victoria students flood the lawns of the B.C. Legislature Friday to join a global strike to demand climate action.

The mobilization is part of a sustained campaign by youth to put pressure on adults, governments and corporations to divest from fossil fuels and invest in post-carbon, renewable energy infrastructure.

The strikes are inspired by the 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, who started the School Strike for Climate in August of 2018.

A 2018 report of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) outlines the drastic measures needed to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5 C – the rate that will substantially reduce the risks and effects of climate change.

The report said meeting the ambitious goal “would require rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.”

“The IPCC report states that we have 11 years to get to 40 per cent emission reductions by 2030,” said 13-year-old Rebecca Wolf Gage, one of the leaders of the strike in Victoria. “Fracking is still continuing in B.C. and we don’t even have a full climate plan. So if our future is doomed why do we go to school? Why don’t we try to save our future? As one of my friends says: Our future is being stolen, we are here to take it back.”